Read Online Silence is Deadly by Jr. Lloyd Biggle - Free Book Online Page B

manipulator, a doctor of external medicine. (A doctor of internal medicine was called a purger.) He went in and for a copper coin had his wound dressed. The doctor applied a fragrant herbal liquid to the bandage and tied it expertly. He asked no question about the source of the wound, which was just as well—Darzek hadn’t been able to think of an answer. He preferred not to admit that he had absently—and stupidly—walked through the holy circle of the Winged Beast, and a priest had whipped him.
    He bought another pot and filled it with strongly scented merchandise. Then he left the mart, walking up one of the narrow lanes of artisans to the boulevard, where he seated himself in the park, bought a goblet of cider from a vendor, and in addition treated himself to a strange sort of sandwich which was a small loaf of pie-shaped bread with the meat filling intermixed and baked with the dough. It made a satisfying meal for him and gave him some fortification for the trek home.
    He walked along the boulevard, studying the pink cobblestoned surlanes that connected with it. He had no difficulty in picking out the one he had traveled that morning. He followed it for more than a kilometer, and suddenly it took a sharp zig he did not remember and widened into a flower bedecked oval he knew he had not seen before.
    He turned back immediately, found the boulevard again, and picked another surlane. This time he was certain he had the right one, but he walked all the way to the city gates without recognizing the house he was seeking.
    At dusk he was back at the boulevard again. He selected another lane and walked it until the darkness became total and he no longer could distinguish the color patterns of the houses.
    Not until then did he admit that he was hopelessly lost.

CHAPTER 6
    It was midnight, with all of Kamm’s moons high in the sky, when Darzek found the warehouse. He knew that he could not go on much longer, that he had to find a place to rest. The crowning irony was that by Kammian standards he was rich. The coins he had picked up so casually amounted to a small fortune; and yet he had no notion of how to find an inn or even a flophouse. He did not even know whether Kamm had such things.
    He needed a place to rest, but he also had to contrive a new disguise that he could wear with confidence. After the fiasco in the mart, every black-caped priest in Northpor would be on the lookout for the perfumer who had profaned the holy circle. He had to find the uniform of a different occupation, preferably one that he could perform; and as far as he knew, on the entire world of Kamm there wasn’t any.
    Peering through a window, he saw, in the warehouse’s dimly moonlit interior, a bin filled with something that might have been clothing. The building’s door was multiply hinged and secured with a crude wood lock. Reminding himself that noise didn’t matter, Darzek pounded the tough wood with a rock and failed to dent it. Then he remembered his knife, and he quickly picked it.
    He opened one of the hinged sections and slipped silently into the building. For a dozen steps he tiptoed. Then he stomped a foot and said aloud, sternly, “You don’t have to, dammit! You can fall over things and slam doors and break everything in the place, and no one can hear you!”
    The habits of a lifetime did not respond to logic. He continued to tiptoe.
    He went directly to the bin; but the contents proved to be large sacks of a coarsely woven material. These would have provided him with a bed, but he knew that anyone finding a professional craftsman, a perfumer, asleep in such a place would have his curiosity aroused in more ways than Darzek was prepared to satisfy.
    Darzek felt his way from bin to bin, still walking quietly; but the other bins were empty or contained only more sacks. Despairingly he turned to leave.
    A faint noise overhead caused him to look up. A large trap door in the ceiling was open. So was a vent in the roof directly above